Sunday School 4/25/21 Extra Credit

We heard from three intelligent women in this week's Sunday School. 

Now, for your Extra Credit, let's hear from two Republican men, both noted for their fealty to Former Guy: Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-Floundering for Relevance) and House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-I Need Trump more than he needs me). Both talked with Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday. 

Wallace asked McCarthy how he'd rate President Joe Biden's first 100 days, and whether any Rs would support the Biden plan for "trillions of dollars in new spending and new taxes for infrastructure and social programs."

McCarthy said the "hundred days, it's more like a bait and switch. The bait was, he was going to govern as bipartisan. But the switch is, he's governed as a socialist." He said that the Rs would work with him on infrastructure,

(b)ut I think the very first thing we would need to do, define what infrastructure is, roads, bridges, airports, Broadcom. We would get this done. And he's trying to pick a number instead of first saying, what do we need to make America competitive?

I love how McCarthy used the Republican definitions of infrastructure -- you know, traditional stuff that their corporate sponsors like. Sadly, they failed to do anything about that stuff, other than holding multiple silly infrastructure weeks during the previous administration.

And speaking of bipartisanship, Wallace noted this info from a Fox News poll:

• 49% favor the $2T infrastructure plan, with 41% opposed;
• 56% favor raising taxes on businesses to pay for it; and
• 63% favor taxing those earning more than $400,000 a year to fund it.

Then, he asked if Rs "risk looking like you are more concerned about protecting corporations and fat cats?" 

McCarthy babbled about the coronavirus bill and "when they learn more what's in it,"  and about waste and fraud and "corruption" and drugs for homeless people and pot and health care for illegal immigrants and stimulus for prisoners (just like the Trump stimulus bills did) - and Chris Wallace and I have no idea whether we're talking about the stimulus bill that the vast majority of Americans were in favor of, or if we're still talking about the infrastructure bill that most majority of Americans are in favor of.  

Wallace tried to direct McCarthy back to his question, about people being in favor of the bill and raising taxes to pay for it. Here's McCarthy's answer.

I think what people want is fairness of the tax code. And think about what they're really looking at. You just ask them, do they support infrastructure? America says yes. But I think what America found out, just 6% is going to the roads, that they're not going to be built for more than a decade, that we spend more on subsidizing electric car than we do on roads, bridges, and airports in this bill, I don't think that will be popular. But what we should read in that is that we should work together.

McCarthy also said that he has not met with Biden "one time nor had one conversation with him." But he surely did run off to Mar-a-Lago just eight days after the twice-impeached Former Guy slunk out of town, so there's that. 

When Wallace asked McCarthy about Former Guy's allegedly saying that the insurrectionists were "more upset about the election than" McCarthy himself was, the GOP leader fell back on the old "my conversations with the president are my conversations with the president" dodge.

And he made it clear he's not interested in having an investigation into the insurrection and what led up to it. Wallace made the comparison between former House Speaker John Boehner's Benghazi investigation, which "was completely confined to discussing what happened in the Benghazi murder. It wasn't about problems in the Middle East." And he asked why not do the same here, confine the investigation "to what happened on January 6th, when you had this insurrection at the Capitol?"  McCarthy's answer?

You had an insurrection at the Capitol. You -- you've had political violence for the last year in this building. You had a Good Friday, an officer killed for political belief right on that Capitol as well. If you're now going to put a commission together, why wouldn't you look at all the problems to solve?

One of the problems to solve is the fact that GOP leaders and wanna-be leaders continue scrambling to kiss Trump's ring, right? 

And I find it funny that the scope of COVID and infrastructure solutions need to be limited, he suggests, but we must investigate the hell out of every snide remark - er, excuse me, every act of political violence expressed by a Democrat, in order to obfuscate what everyone knows about January 6th. 

Here's McCarthy saying it himself.

The president bears responsibility for Wednesday's attack on Congress by mob rioters. He should have immediately denounced the mob when he saw what was unfolding. These facts require immediate action by President Trump... Some say the riots were caused by antifa. There is absolutely no evidence of that. Conservatives should be the first to say so.

Maybe if we can get Republicans believing what they saw and heard with their own eyes and ears, we could start solving the problems the country is facing. 

And then, there's Graham. I already gave you his comments on why we don't have systemic racism in this country - those were in the Sunday School post. He did say there are bad actors, that "the Chauvin trial was a just result," but that in Ohio the deadly force was justified.

So, this attack on police and policing -- reform the police, yes, call them all racist, no. You know, America is a work in progress but best -- best place on the planet and Joe Biden spent a lot of time running the place down. I wish he would stop it.

Alrighty, then - whatever the hell that means.

On his belief that "Biden's campaign was a fraud on the country because of how differently he is governing," Wallace said he's doing lots of stuff he said he'd so, and wondered why it's a fraud.

Well, during the campaign, he made us all believe that Joe Biden would be the moderate choice, that he really -- that court packing was a bonehead idea. All of a sudden, we got a commission to change the structure of the Supreme Court, making DC a state. I think that's a very radical idea that will change the makeup of the United States Senate. AOC said his first 100 days exceeded her expectations. That's all you need to know... So, I'm not very impressed with the first 100 days. This is not what I thought I would get from Joe Biden.

He also said that "if you raise taxes now, you're going to destroy jobs," and that he's "not going to raise corporate taxes to 28%." But he supports Sen. Joe Manchin's plan to pay for infrastructure, which raises corporate taxes to 25%, "as long as it doesn't hurt the economy." Which makes perfect sense, in some floundering for relevance universe.

This might be a good time to remind these two that President Biden has repeatedly said he's going to be president for all Americans, not president for all Republicans in the House and Senate. The ball is in really in their court to participate, instead of sitting back whining about elections having consequences.

See you around campus.